Google Tag Manager • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Tag Manager

#21

Post by btilly » Mon, Oct 01, 2012, 8:49 PM UTC

rfergie wrote: post #9

Right now I have that feeling you get when you build something you are quite proud of and then someone else comes along and does it far far better for free. C'est la vie I guess. Onto the next thing, whatever that may be

Google just validated your idea. Don't just assume that they did it better. Look at what they did, steal any ideas that you like from them, and continue on with your own value proposition.

Just because it is Google doesn't mean that you're doomed. If it did, then Dropbox would have instantly folded to Google Drive. They didn't.

Really this is not you against all of Google. It is you against a small team of people at Google who have some inherent marketing advantages, but who also have a lot of corporate overhead that you don't, and who knows what internal barriers to doing what they want to do. (Which might not even be the right direction.)

Is it a competitive threat? Sure. Is it a foregone conclusion? No way!

Re: Google Tag Manager

#22

Post by TomAnthony » Mon, Oct 01, 2012, 8:55 PM UTC

Sucks for http://www.brighttag.com/ who do exactly this.

Incidentally, they have a great page explaining tags:

http://www.brighttag.com/tag-101/

Re: Google Tag Manager

#23

Post by bialecki » Mon, Oct 01, 2012, 9:29 PM UTC

tarr11 wrote: post #19

bialecki wrote: post #17

Very interesting. I started a service like this a few months ago called Add This Script ( http://www.addthisscript.com/ ). Collecting marketing/ad tracking scripts is just one use case for something like this (although it's likely the most easily monetizable). A host script like this can also manage script (e.g. jQuery) dependencies or provide unified APIs (e.g. a common API for web analytics/tracking usage with the…

Your site appears to be down.

Oops, misspelled the domain. Thanks for pointing that out.

Re: Google Tag Manager

#24

Post by jkent » Mon, Oct 01, 2012, 10:05 PM UTC

jsdalton wrote: post #2

I don't understand what these "tags" are that they are referring to? I guess I really just do not understand what this product does. Anyone care to enlighten me? EDIT: Thanks to everyone who replied, I do have a cleared idea now. This video was particularly helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRvbFpeZ11Y So the way I'd describe this to myself to make sense of it is it's a content management system for third-party…

Hi

I manage this product here at Google (for the USA).

We think that it should speed up site loading (in most cases) by asynchronously wrapping your other synchronous and asynchronous JavaScript tags.

We've included built in templates for our own tags at first though we will be introducing easier support for third-party tags soon (templating). At the moment you can do this by adding custom img or Javascript tags in the interface.

This product has most impact where you want to add/remove multiple affiliate tracking or remarketing tags (for instance), across your whole site quickly and easily.

Hope that helps.

Re: Google Tag Manager

#25

Post by jkent » Mon, Oct 01, 2012, 10:08 PM UTC

dustincoates wrote: post #18

jsdalton wrote: post #2

I don't understand what these "tags" are that they are referring to? I guess I really just do not understand what this product does. Anyone care to enlighten me? EDIT: Thanks to everyone who replied, I do have a cleared idea now. This video was particularly helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRvbFpeZ11Y So the way I'd describe this to myself to make sense of it is it's a content management system for third-party…

I've been using it for a few weeks and, quite honestly, it's not so good for marketers. Like you mentioned, it's not the easiest to use for someone who doesn't already have the technical skills. Where this is really useful is on the agency side. It can be really difficult to get clients to update their tagging. They have a lot going on and changing a conversion code sometimes gets pushed down the list of things to do…

I think the initial implementation can be tricky (we'd recommend a Google Analytics Certified Partner to help), though once that is done, our initial experience is that adding tags is not too difficult.

We can help with updating tags (please reach out to your Account Manager), or please reach out to me in my profile.

Re: Google Tag Manager

#26

Post by jkent » Mon, Oct 01, 2012, 10:11 PM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #14

lickerswill wrote: post #5

Do lots of cool stuff without bothering your IT department! Now add this code to every page on your site...

Well, it's a one-time investment so your marketers/whoever else can make easy changes in the future. Will be useful for SEOs. Personally though I'm concerned by how checking a remote server will add to page load time.

It's a fair concern - we recommend using just Google Tag Manager (synchronous and lightweight) code to fire all your other tags asynchronously. So in most cases, where you call more than one remote code snippet, it could speed it up.

Re: Google Tag Manager

#27

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 01, 2012, 10:15 PM UTC

jkent wrote: post #24

jsdalton wrote: post #2

I don't understand what these "tags" are that they are referring to? I guess I really just do not understand what this product does. Anyone care to enlighten me? EDIT: Thanks to everyone who replied, I do have a cleared idea now. This video was particularly helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRvbFpeZ11Y So the way I'd describe this to myself to make sense of it is it's a content management system for third-party…

Hi I manage this product here at Google (for the USA). We think that it should speed up site loading (in most cases) by asynchronously wrapping your other synchronous and asynchronous JavaScript tags. We've included built in templates for our own tags at first though we will be introducing easier support for third-party tags soon (templating). At the moment you can do this by adding custom img or Javascript tags in t…

[deleted]

Re: Google Tag Manager

#28

Post by typicalrunt » Mon, Oct 01, 2012, 10:58 PM UTC

I think Google just stepped right onto Tealium's turf, and made it free. Ouch.

Re: Google Tag Manager

#29

Post by javajosh » Mon, Oct 01, 2012, 11:41 PM UTC

jkent wrote: post #24

jsdalton wrote: post #2

I don't understand what these "tags" are that they are referring to? I guess I really just do not understand what this product does. Anyone care to enlighten me? EDIT: Thanks to everyone who replied, I do have a cleared idea now. This video was particularly helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRvbFpeZ11Y So the way I'd describe this to myself to make sense of it is it's a content management system for third-party…

Hi I manage this product here at Google (for the USA). We think that it should speed up site loading (in most cases) by asynchronously wrapping your other synchronous and asynchronous JavaScript tags. We've included built in templates for our own tags at first though we will be introducing easier support for third-party tags soon (templating). At the moment you can do this by adding custom img or Javascript tags in t…

Ha, this product is very clever. You are effectively bootstrapping yourself into arbitrary page execution environments, and giving (non-technical) users the ability to parameterize and manipulate that environment.

The joys of indirection.

In trade for building the tooling around managing that parameterization, Google gets...eyes. Eyes that need to manipulate tags are eyes that need to buy tags, consume the information those tags have generated. But even if that market doesn't pan out, it extends Google's knowledge of who is reading what, where, which of course is the flip side of search: not just spidering content and seeing how it relates to itself via links, but observing users and seeing how they relate to content. This is valuable data, and whatever you spend on "free" tooling is probably justified.

Smart.

Re: Google Tag Manager

#30

Post by jkent » Mon, Oct 01, 2012, 11:48 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #29

jkent wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi I manage this product here at Google (for the USA). We think that it should speed up site loading (in most cases) by asynchronously wrapping your other synchronous and asynchronous JavaScript tags. We've included built in templates for our own tags at first though we will be introducing easier support for third-party tags soon (templating). At the moment you can do this by adding custom img or Javascript tags in t…

Ha, this product is very clever. You are effectively bootstrapping yourself into arbitrary page execution environments, and giving (non-technical) users the ability to parameterize and manipulate that environment. The joys of indirection. In trade for building the tooling around managing that parameterization, Google gets...eyes. Eyes that need to manipulate tags are eyes that need to buy tags, consume the informatio…

Under the Google Tag Manager Terms of Service, the account holder owns the data. We don't do anything with that data without your consent and Google Tag Manager collects very little data itself - it's cookie-less. I hope that helps!